Gone fishing

Since delving into the murky world of board games, I have tried to drag my family down with me. If I’m going down, I’m taking as many with me as I can. So far only my daughter is joining me on the journey, but I keep trying with her-in-doors and god love her she puts up with me constantly asking if she wants to try this or that game.

So with that in mind, half of my purchases these days are made with one eye on the ‘family element’ and I have been introduced to an absolute gem of a game called ‘Hey! That’s my fish’.

It’s a small, easy to understand, bright, colourful, fun game to play that’s perfect for the family. In fact it’s so quick it can take longer to set up than to actually play.

You start with 60 hexagonal pieces, these represent ice flows and have either 1, 2, or 3 fish pictured on them. These are laid out in rows to make your board; you then take your playing pieces, which are penguins naturally, and alternately place them on any hexagon you wish. That’s it, your ready to go.

To play you move your penguin from one ice flow to any other in any direction, although it must be in a straight line between ice flows. When you’ve done that simply pick up the ice flow you moved from and start a pile in front of you. It’s that simple, and at the end of the game you count up how many fish are on all of the ice flows you collected and the highest scores the winner. See told you it was an easy game.

Now I did leave out one simple rule, but it’s a rule that turns this from a kid’s game into an adult battle of wits and strategy. Its simple really, a penguin cannot be moved over a space without an ice flow. Basically in this game not only do penguins not fly, they don’t swim either.

This is where the strategy comes in to play, do you manoeuvre your opponent to the side of the board and corner them there? Do you cut yourself off from the rest of the board and try to mop up an area? Or do you do play like my daughter and jump round the board and collect as many pieces as you can.

I usually try the first but still end up getting beaten annihilated by her. No I don’t take it easy when were playing, I’ve been beaten by her too many times now to do that.

That’s one of the great things about this game, its as simple, or as deep and complex as you want to play it. The only problem I have found with the game is, trying to pick up the pieces is almost impossible without sending bits of ice flow all over the table. To get round this we use a small piece of blue tack to stick on and lift them up (Thanks to xibxang for the tip).

If you’re looking for a group game to break up a long session of dungeon crawling, space exploration, or resource building you shouldn’t pass this by because ‘its only a kids game’. Trust me its so much more.